


Unraveling Duality

by SoaringJe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Gen, Slow Burn, Time Travel, but not the typical HP time travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 22:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18725836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoaringJe/pseuds/SoaringJe
Summary: "Hermione Granger finds being a Professor at Hogwarts to be too boring?”“Well maybe if there were Death Eaters in school,” she joked.Hermione really should have expected that joke to come back and bite her in the arse.~The war was over. They hadwon. They had emerged broken and haunted, but triumphant.And then the board reset, with a piece far, so very far, away from home. There is no way back.And so she walks amongst ghosts.(or, I'm turning the tables: watch canon get rewritten with DADA Prof. not-Granger and sixth-year Bellatrix Black.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep Creator's Style shown.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drifting, lost. but not for long.

_It is theorized that a wizard’s consciousness is contained entirely within their magic, such that should a wizard be stripped of everything but their magic, they are still capable of thought and awareness._

She didn’t know where she was. She felt caught in that fugue state of not-quite-awake, or perhaps awake-for-far-too-long: nothing felt _real._ Everything lacked that edge of reality, the bite of complete awareness, the sting of _here._

Was her mind too fatigued to perceive it? 

Had she once more pushed herself too far, demanded too much of her frail human body, drove herself relentlessly onward, failing to pause, to rest, until the choice, like so many before it, was taken from her...

Or had it been her demons, haunting her, wresting away what should have been a restful sleep, a chance for her to recuperate, and twisting it into a dungeon of horrors, corrupting what was and is with what could have been, the innumerable barbs pricking at her as she drowned in darkness…

Or perhaps she was ill, a fever wreaking havoc on her mind as her immune system fought. Perhaps too she was drugged, her mind forcibly addled for as long as it was within her system. 

That should have alarmed her.

_Some people believe this is what happens during apparition, to a lesser extent: rather than stripping away your being, it is instead compressed, allowing your magic to encapsulate you in your entirety._

She didn’t know where she was. All she saw, all she heard, all she felt, all she perceived, was an _absence._

_Please…_

What? It was faint, fleeting, ephemeral. Had she merely imagined it? Was she so desperate to fill the _absence_ that her mind, the brilliant, terrible thing it was, conjured specters of her imagination?

She heard something.

_Someone, anyone…_

There it was again. And the doubt that it had simply been a machination of her mind ebbed away as details slotted into place, too numerous and too confusing for her mind to have created. Probably.

Someone was...someone was calling her. Calling _for_ her.

_Help…_

She _moved._ She had no sense of her body, saw no glimmer of light, heard not a whisper more, felt no wind part before her motion—all she could sense was herself—her abstract being—, the distress of the person calling her, and the distance between them. It was unacceptable.

She _moved,_ willing herself closer without hesitation, without pause, knowing instinctively, subconsciously, from the depths of her very being, how to close that gap. Someone needed her help and she _knew_ she couldn’t help from where she was, not as she was, not as they were; but she _could_ help, if only she was—

_Apparition is only for an instant, but the proponents of this theory take the strictly-physical effects of splinching as proof that it is your consciousness, through your magic, that travels, and the rest of you simply hitches a ride, to varying degrees of success._

How you have wandered...

Much later, she would think back to this moment, and wonder if perhaps this was what Icarus felt, flying too close to the sun. One moment she was moving, and in the next all she knew was _pain._

_What would demonstrate this theory to its full extent? A form of self-travel that lasts longer, much longer, than an instant, requiring a consciousness borne only through magic. Such a consciousness is typically dead, much less aware. That’s in large part why this remains just a theory._

 

Was she screaming? A part of her wondered, blind and deaf and numb to anything but agony.

 

 

And then she knew nothing at all.

 

_Living? Well, that would require one hell of a tether, wouldn't it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Invisitext present in-chapter.
> 
> May 6, 2019: Thanks to Menz, Delirious Comfort, and the Bellamione Cult.
> 
> Feb 17, 2020:  
> edited: split the prologue and shifting the latter half to chapter one. Thanks to fusagi and Lys~


	2. an arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an arrival heard around the world (not literally)

 

* * *

There was a thunderous crack, utterly incongruous with clear blue skies. The boom echoed and rolled across the grounds; and had she not already been looking out across the fields, she wouldn’t have witnessed what had immediately preceded the sound.

Rather than lightning reaching down from the heavens to touch the earth, there was an explosion of light against the backdrop of blue; and as she blinked away the spots in her eyes, her ears ringing, she watched a figure plummet to the ground. Her heart leapt into her throat, and for a moment—an instance, an eternity—she almost hesitated, almost paused, as a memory overtook her senses—

the wind whistling in her ears, biting against her face and drawing tears from her eyes, her gut left far behind. it was a familiar sensation after all these years. what was unfamiliar, what made it terrifying instead of exciting, was her total lack of control. she was alone, adrift in the air with only gravity acting upon her. 

she fell. and regardless of her aptitude on a broom, the brilliance of her mind, the magic surging within her veins as it hadn’t since she was a child, railing against the structure age had wrought—there was nothing she could do.

she met the ground with a sickening crunch.

_Never again,_ swept through her mind, her wand steady as she refused to buckle, refused to bend, refused to let fear paralyze her. She _refused._

The figure met the ground with a _pomf,_ as if she had landed on a pillow rather than earth. 

And _this_ time, Minerva upheld her vow. 

She had barely taken a breath before the doors opened behind her, someone sweeping past her; she fell in-step with his strides instinctively. 

It was Albus, his blue eyes electric as their long strides ate up the ground, his head turned towards her. His lips pulled up into a smile.

“Fine bit of spellwork, Minerva,” he complimented her.

Minerva blinked. Albus faced forward once more. “You saw that?” She didn’t see how he _could_ have—

“Sensed it, my dear,” he corrected her assumption. “I was examining the ward structure when Hogwarts’ Deputy modified part of the grounds.”

Of course. And had she not been Deputy… Her lips thinned. _Why_ had her first instinct been to use Transfiguration? She could have—

“It has been my experience,” Albus began, voice oddly soft, “that sometimes we are nudged towards what is best for Hogwarts.”

Minerva started. ‘What is best for Hogwarts,’ he said. How—

“Transfiguring the earth had the highest chance of successfully avoiding injury for our guest.”

Minerva blinked as the pieces clicked together, but _surely_ it wasn’t—“You said you were examining the ward structure?”

“It is intact.” An intact ward structure when someone—a woman, she was close enough to see before her eyes darted to Albus for signs of jest, of which she found none—appeared well within the bounds of the wards, which included an Anti-Apparition jinx that had _never_ been worked around. The implications were staggering.

“And speaking of guests,” Albus began, drawing her out of her thoughts. He was looking towards the gates, in front of which stood several people.

She was too far away to discern more, not through conventional means. But as Albus had recently reminded her, she was the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts; Minerva found that pulse, that steady thrum that was so uniquely Hogwarts and carefully sunk in. 

She meandered through the network of magical energy, old and varied, reaching for the node representing the front gates. Most visitors simply touched the gate, a bit of their magical energy entering into the gate’s port where it thrummed steadily until they were granted access. The magic in the gate’s port pulsed in a pattern.

She recognized it. “They are from the Ministry?”

Albus hummed and nodded. A smile played at his lips. “I can’t say I’m surprised; this is right up their alley.”

“You know who they are?”

His eyes twinkled as he turned to her. “A timely response from the Ministry? I can think of one department.”

Minerva chuffed an abbreviated laugh. Having worked in one of those departments and being familiar with Albus’ particular brand of humor, she knew it was an exaggeration, albeit not much of one.

“I daresay I shouldn’t keep them waiting; would you mind discerning our guest’s health?”

Minerva nodded absentmindedly, wand already up as she neared the woman; Albus peeled off towards the gates, and her wand flicked through the diagnostic spells Poppy had taught her not long after she had begun teaching. She had gotten perhaps too much practice in them. Though, she supposed she wasn’t surprised; she knew too many Gryffindors.

A weight lifted from her shoulders as each and every spell came back with a clean bill of health. Well, all except one.

Her brow furrowed at how depleted their guest’s magical stores were; it was barely above critical. The woman was in no danger, provided she didn’t need to cast for a week; but it was peculiar. Either she had disregarded her body’s warnings and continued to cast, or _something_ had drained most of her above-average magical stores in one go.

Minerva wasn’t sure which possibility she preferred. Which possibility she feared.

This was certainly not how Minerva expected her day to go once she had arrived at Hogwarts. The first thing on her itinerary was supposed to be a meeting between Deputy and Headmaster before the Heads of Houses joined them, followed by the other professors and staff. Minerva had been looking forward to seeing Poppy and Pomona and Filius and even Hagrid, having only really kept in touch with Albus since the previous school year ended; training to be Deputy kept her busy, and her colleagues likewise had eventful summers. 

She had an inkling that the meetings would have to be rescheduled, and she could already feel a headache building. The meeting _today_ had been cutting it close, with the DADA position still open as Albus had not found a replacement yet. 

It had surprised her at the time, not so much that Albus left her to teach Transfiguration—it was never a secret that people expected her to head the Transfiguration department after Albus—but that he had decided to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Sure, he confided in some of his worries _later,_ but he had a bothersome habit to keep his cards close to his chest.

Minerva was quite tired of unpleasant surprises...emerald eyes appraised the unconscious woman...and she could only hope that she would not be another one of them.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 6, 2019:   
> (i rushed the ending. might go back and edit after finals.  
> edit: shifted the entirety of this chapter to the next. am still going to add more to this)
> 
> i also realized that my tendency, especially with minerva, is to leave a lot unsaid and implied. lemme know if things are too confusing
> 
> Feb 17, 2020:  
> at least two scenes still need to be added, shifted Hermione's POV to the next chapter which won't be published until it's not as half-baked as when I published the first two 'chapters'


End file.
